COVID-19-Era Trade Policy Interventions Affecting Medical Goods : Form, Frequency, Duration, and Scale
Drawing upon the findings of several trade policy surveillance initiatives, an account is presented here of government resort to trade restrictions and reforms affecting medical goods during the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Some nations mustere...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2022
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099709507152227022/IDU0a9f03efd0fb0604d0b0a5ba004ff9e57a1bd http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37716 |
| Summary: | Drawing upon the findings of several
trade policy surveillance initiatives, an account is
presented here of government resort to trade restrictions
and reforms affecting medical goods during the Coronavirus
(COVID-19) pandemic. Some nations mustered effective public
health responses early in the pandemic without resorting to
trade restrictions. Some other governments quickly reversed
export restrictions once their adverse side effects became
evident. However, another group of nations have removed
COVID-19 trade restrictions very slowly, if at all. These
findings challenge the assumption that existing multilateral
rules effectively regulate the crisis-era application of
general exceptions to non-discrimination norms for goods
trade. While the logic of those exceptions is to prevent
multilateral trade obligations impeding public health
responses, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that these flawed
rules on exceptions have attenuated the contribution of
cross-border trade to pandemic response, in particular in
those developing countries that source much medical goods
from abroad. |
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